How to maintain your Investment details…
Just received a copy of ‘My Money Book’ – For a long and happy journey called life. This is an Exide Life Insurance publication and is meant to be a diary of your assets and liabilities.
Such a book could also be called ‘a hand over book’. Let me just explain what this book is supposed to do from a software point of view.
If you were writing code for a software program you would like to document what the BA said, and why that particular code was being written in that format. Exactly if a company was ISO compliant it would also document all its actions and processes.
Unfortunately human beings do things differently under force – we maintain records because the government asks us to.
We do not maintain personal records because there is nobody asking us to. Imagine if you are an Indian and you are travelling to New York. At the airport you have a stroke. Nobody knows you except by seeing your passport…then the process starts..they have no clue on what to do.
Ditto for finances. Once you die your wife starts putting things together. I could write a book on what some of my clients have gone through putting things together.
This attempt by Exide Life Insurance is a good first step in that direction. Here is a book that can keep track of all your finances – bank account, mutual funds, life insurance, loans, mortgages – the works. This could be more than useful for the surviving spouse. In fact it should be made mandatory for people to maintain records in a particular format.
Many Chartered Accountants insist on making a balance sheet – so at least people have a fair picture of what you own and what you owe. HOWEVER the details like folio number, no. of units, beneficiary’s name, etc. can be found ONLY in the ‘My Money Book’.
In short it is a useful book – however I do think that a lot, lot more can be added, an E version launched. Once that is done, it could even be printed and attached to a will.
Lakshminarayanan
Just thought this would be useful
HDFC life insurance too had published last year a similar pdf
http://www.hdfclife.com/campaigns/HDFCLife-Little-Book-of-Legacy.pdf
Mohana Ganesh
Subra :
Where is the E version available?
bharat shah
i think , still no e version. it could be available through post/courier by signing in exide life site. i am waiting.
Pradip
Dear Sir,
I received a similar book which was published by UTI Mutual funds long back, but somehow nobody felt the need to use it. My friend, Prashant who is with Reliance MF as RM got if from one IFA and shared it with me.
This book seems to similar to what you have mentioned in your post. I am going to print it and give it to my clients with few modifications. I have added a page for Will inside this book.
prasad
it’s not related to any investment, but related to ECS, do the sending bank and receiving bank for my money should have same account name? or just account number is sufficient.
S.K
I use Perfios.com. And it keeps record of all my investment, updates automatically and generates all reports needed like capital gains etc.
S.K
Anish
Hi S.K,
Thats great , but just make sure that if it is password protected than your spouse knows the password. Otherwise it can spell a doom for her. I always prefer to keep it in Notebook. I think keeping in hardcopy is the best way for everybody
Hello subra sir,
Thats most awesome
To anyone,
Below is a nice template which can help everybody (Download is at the bottom of the article)
http://www.thewealthwisher.com/2012/10/23/personal-financial-information-template/
Please fill this template, take a printout and share with your spouse/parents/children